Even though preview performances of the touted stage musical adaptation of Mira Nair’s 2001 sleeper hit, Monsoon Wedding , have been steadily taking place in a quiet university town halfway across the globe, it is still possible to follow the goings-on vicariously by thumbing in the right combination of hashtags and key words on your phone. What reveals itself on, say, an Instagram feed, is a profusion of marigolds (the flower of choice in a Punjabi wedding), the exuberant countenances of a dedicated ensemble hard at work and play, colourful sets, gorgeous costumes and the beguiling kohl-lined eyes of the woman staring out from the cover of the programme guide.
There is also the occasional sighting of the musical’s director, Nair herself, an enigmatic figure who appears to be at once strict and nurturing. For a frenetic eight-week engagement till June 25, Monsoon Wedding , the musical, will test waters at a well-regarded regional venue, the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, before it is likely to be booked for a run on Broadway. The production comes armed with a spanking new musical score and 21 songs by Vishal Bhardwaj, no less, who has worked in tandem with the award-winning lyricist Susan Birkenhead.
Multi-hued cast
In a venture that features many of the characters familiar from the film, the cast is as multicultural as it gets, drawn from the burgeoning South Asian diaspora in the US and Canada, with a smattering of names from India. Jaaved Jaaferi’s fleet-footed early appearances in Indian cinema of the 1980s marked him out, even then, as a performer born to the musical stage. He finally finds himself in a Broadway-bound enterprise albeit in the relatively mellow avatar of the play’s resident patriarch, Lalit Verma. In the original, the part was essayed with much gravitas by Naseeruddin Shah, who did not shake a leg but Jaaferi can hardly be expected to abstain from the shenanigans.
Palomi Ghosh was awarded a special mention at the 2015 National Awards for her performance as the legendary Goan songbird Lorna Cordeiro in the Konkani musical drama, Nachom-ia-Kumpasar . She is a worthy member of the ensemble, as is theatre actor Sharvari Deshpande, who has delivered thoughtful performances in Mumbai-based productions like Kyun Kyun Ladki and She-He-Shey , both with the Gillo Repertory. Deshpande has won herself the coveted part of Ria Verma who, in the hands of the talented Shefali Shetty, provided the film an embittered beauty, if not its soul. In interviews, Nair has already dubbed Deshpande, “the new Waheeda Rehman”. It’s a part with heartbreakingly dark underpinnings — sexual abuse in an upper-middle-class family — that had been specially nurtured by Nair and her writer Sabrina Dhawan, and is likely to provide the buoyant musical its moments of pause. Finally, Namit Das, one of the true-blue singing stars of the Indian stage, steps into the shoes of the harried wedding planner, P K Dubey, rendered so remarkably iconic by the inimitable Vijay Raaz in the original.
On the Indian stage, Das is hot property and an audience’s delight. He’s proved his métier as a comic in Rajat Kapoor’s long-running Hamlet, The Clown Prince , and Sunil Shanbag brought his singing talent to the fore in Stories in a Song . Despite being a seasoned hand in the quick-fix world of Indian theatre with its cascading timelines and last-minute tweaks, the meticulous workings of a so-called regional theatre has astounded Das. “We have technical rehearsals for weeks on end, in which each moment is honed to perfection,” he said.
State-of-the-art venue
Back home, Das was used to the one odd day of ‘tech’ that Indian venues doled out parsimoniously. The luxury of time aside, the Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, where the musical is being performed, is a 600-seat proscenium theatre that is truly state-of-the-art. The punctiliousness of the technicians, the discipline of stage hands, the whirring machinery of impeccable stagecraft, all conspire to bring the impossible within reach. A live orchestra of mostly western instruments, except for percussive elements, will play behind the stage.
According to Das, the music is very clearly Indian in its feel, although marshalled to a western aesthetic. “Unlike India where accompanists are available just for a day or two, here I had access to the pianist and the ‘rhythm person’ throughout. Otherwise, it would’ve been impossible to block a production in which music is so intrinsic,” he said.
Das was also intrigued by the ‘swings’: two members of the company, Dani Jazzar and Namita Kapoor, who prepare every male and female part respectively, ready to step in at a moment’s notice should an actor be unavailable for a show, not knowing till the very last minute whether or what they would be called on to perform. While there are understudies who shadow specific characters; the versatile and flexible swings often prove to be indispensable to a musical’s functioning. His stage experience in India has held Das in good stead during previews, “Within the chaos of Indian productions, there are a lot of surprises thrown at us that teach us to think on our feet, which I felt gave me an advantage,” he said.
Auspicious beginnings
In these shows, that took place before the gala opening on May 19 (after a series of preview shows), everything may not go to plan, but the process of falling and recovering remains visible to audiences. The play changes everyday. “Even for us actors, the ‘unseen element’ we talk about is neutralised as we gradually get used to audiences of all kinds,” said Das. Although a move to Broadway is not yet guaranteed, the location has proved propitious in the past with several shows having transferred to the Big Apple after opening runs at Berkeley Rep. This includes shows like Stew’s Passing Strange , a comedy-drama rock musical about a young African American’s artistic journey of self-discovery in Europe, and the first stage production of Green Day’s 2004 rock opera American Idiot .
More than the glitz, critical to the musical’s success will be the tender love stories it negotiates. According to Das, the track between Dubey and Alice (Anisha Nagarajan), the maid he is so irrevocably smitten by, is afforded a touching naiveté. Their marital vows are much more sacrosanct than the conjugal pact brokered between Hemant (Michael Maliakel) and Aditi (Kuhoo Verma), which smacks of upper-class pragmatism even if real feelings may lie beneath. “It is an upstairs and downstairs set-up. The class issues are hinted on; but the focus is on the different kinds of love,” signed off Das.
Monsoon Wedding ongoing at Roda Theatre, Berkeley Rep till June 25 ; see www.berkeleyrep.org for more details.
